Related papers: A Convergence Result for Regularized Actor-Critic …
We study the global convergence and global optimality of actor-critic, one of the most popular families of reinforcement learning algorithms. While most existing works on actor-critic employ bi-level or two-timescale updates, we focus on…
The average-reward formulation of reinforcement learning (RL) has drawn increased interest in recent years for its ability to solve temporally-extended problems without relying on discounting. Meanwhile, in the discounted setting,…
We propose an actor-critic framework to solve the time-continuous stochastic optimal control problem. A least square temporal difference method is applied to compute the value function for the critic. The policy gradient method is…
Actor Critic methods have found immense applications on a wide range of Reinforcement Learning tasks especially when the state-action space is large. In this paper, we consider actor critic and natural actor critic algorithms with function…
Policy Dual Averaging (PDA) offers a principled Policy Mirror Descent (PMD) framework that more naturally admits value function approximation than standard PMD, enabling the use of approximate advantage (or Q-) functions while retaining…
We establish the convergence of the deep actor-critic reinforcement learning algorithm presented in [Angiuli et al., 2023a] in the setting of continuous state and action spaces with an infinite discrete-time horizon. This algorithm provides…
We revisit the standard formulation of tabular actor-critic algorithm as a two time-scale stochastic approximation with value function computed on a faster time-scale and policy computed on a slower time-scale. This emulates policy…
Continuous-time stochastic control with time-inhomogeneous jump-diffusion dynamics is central in finance and economics, but computing optimal policies is difficult under explicit time dependence, discontinuous shocks, and high…
Entropy regularization is commonly used to improve policy optimization in reinforcement learning. It is believed to help with \emph{exploration} by encouraging the selection of more stochastic policies. In this work, we analyze this claim…
In this paper, we prove some convergence results of a special case of optimistic policy iteration algorithm for stochastic shortest path problem. We consider both Monte Carlo and $TD(\lambda)$ methods for the policy evaluation step under…
Analyzing and controlling system entropy is a powerful tool for regulating predictability of control systems. Applications benefiting from such approaches range from reinforcement learning and data security to human-robot collaboration. In…
In this paper, we investigate the impact of introducing relative entropy regularization on the Nash Equilibria (NE) of General-Sum $N$-agent games, revealing the fact that the NE of such games conform to linear Gaussian policies. Moreover,…
This work examines average-reward reinforcement learning with general policy parametrization. Existing state-of-the-art (SOTA) guarantees for this problem are either suboptimal or hindered by several challenges, including poor scalability…
We study the error introduced by entropy regularization in infinite-horizon discrete discounted Markov decision processes. We show that this error decreases exponentially in the inverse regularization strength, both in a weighted…
Reinforcement learning, mathematically described by Markov Decision Problems, may be approached either through dynamic programming or policy search. Actor-critic algorithms combine the merits of both approaches by alternating between steps…
Model Predictive Control has been recently proposed as policy approximation for Reinforcement Learning, offering a path towards safe and explainable Reinforcement Learning. This approach has been investigated for Q-learning and actor-critic…
Despite its popularity in the reinforcement learning community, a provably convergent policy gradient method for continuous space-time control problems with nonlinear state dynamics has been elusive. This paper proposes proximal gradient…
Recent studies have increasingly focused on non-asymptotic convergence analyses for actor-critic (AC) algorithms. One such effort introduced a two-timescale critic-actor algorithm for the discounted cost setting using a tabular…
We introduce a class of networked Markov potential games in which agents are associated with nodes in a network. Each agent has its own local potential function, and the reward of each agent depends only on the states and actions of the…
This paper investigates infinite-horizon average reward Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs) with general parametrization. We propose a Primal-Dual Natural Actor-Critic algorithm that adeptly manages constraints while ensuring a…